Terminal-to-terminal communication may allow data transmissions to be made directly between two or more terminals of a telecommunication system. The terminal-to-terminal communication may overlay regular cellular communications, and may be performed with or without cellular network coverage.
In some instances, using terminal-to-terminal communication may increase network capacity. For example, terminal-to-terminal communication may permit spatial multiplexing, which may allow for higher relative spectrum usage. Employing terminal-to-terminal communication may also permit throughput between terminals to be increased if a terminal-to-terminal link experiences better channel quality than a cellular link. Using terminal-to-terminal communication may reduce resource usage when data is transmitted once between two terminals during a terminal-to-terminal transmission, as compared to transmitting the same data twice between the two terminals over a cellular link, e.g., once through an uplink (UL) transmission from a transmitting terminal to a base station and once through a downlink (DL) transmission to a receiving terminal from the base station.
Terminal-to-terminal communication may reduce communication latency of a telecommunication network. For example, terminal-to-terminal communication may not relay data through a base station and/or a core network, thus potentially reducing the transit time of the data and/or the load on the base station and/or the core network.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one example technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.